The Rule of Law

An English law professor named A. V. Dicey is credited with coining the expression, “the rule of law” in his 1885 book Introduction to the Study of Law of the Constitution.

Dicey may have coined the term, but the concept predates him. In 1780, John Adams incorporated the idea in the Massachusetts Constitution establishing “a government of laws and not of men.” Actually, the concept was common during the days of the founding of the United States. In his famous pamphlet, Common Sense, Thomas Paine wrote, “In America, the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.” Even before that, modern authors wrote about this ideal: Montesquieu in The Spirit of the Law (1748), John Locke in his Second Treatise of Government(1690), and Samuel Rutherford in Lex Rex (1644).

The concept of the rule of law is goes back to ancient times. Plato wrote: “Where the law is subject to some other authority and has none of its own, the collapse of the state, in my view, is not far off; but if law is the master of the government and the government is its slave, then the situation is full of promise and men enjoy all the blessings that the gods shower on a state.” Aristotle said something similar: “It is more proper that law should govern than any one of the citizens: upon the same principle, if it is advantageous to place the supreme power in some particular persons, they should be appointed to be only guardians, and the servants of the laws”(Aristotle, Politics3.16).

Before the Greeks, the Medes and the Persians practiced the principle. “The thing stands fast, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be revoked” (Dan. 6:12).

The rule of law is not a man-made idea. God established it. “Also it shall be, when he (the king) sits on the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write for himself a copy of this law in a book, from the one before the priests, the Levites. And it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God and be careful to observe all the words of this law and these statutes, that his heart may not be lifted above his brethren, that he may not turn aside from the commandment to the right hand or to the left, and that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he and his children in the midst of Israel” (Deut. 17:18-20).

It has said that there is a difference between the rule of the law and rule by law. In the former, the law rules, preventing the abuse of power. In the second, the law serves as a tool of rulers.

All citizens should live by the rule of law. The members of Congress exempt themselves from the laws that apply to the rest of us. They exempted themselves from many of the laws they have passed (such as being exempt from any fear of prosecution for sexual harassment). They didn’t pay into Social Security (they can retire after only one term—with the same pay!). The latest is to exempt themselves from Healthcare Reform. We have an elite governing class that is above the law.